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Social Justice Warriors, small towns, and Trump rallies…let’s talk about my poultry instead.

Chelsea is a small town with a bit of a multiple personality disorder due to its rural location not far from the Evil Empire of Social Justice Warriors, also known as Ann Arbor.

What this means is that you have a town full of rural, small town, conservative type folks with their chickens and guns living next door to extremely wealthy liberal “refugees” who have fled the diversified dysutopia that left wing policies have turned A2 into.

I generally feel in my element here, having grown up rural and dirt poor but then going to Ann Arbor to attend the University of Michigan. I ended up staying in Ann Arbor with my husband for a number of years until we left for Ann Arbor’s poorer little sib-city, Ypsilanti, where we bought a house for cheap so we could fix it up while saving enough money to buy land out in the country.

So I “get” why, for example, even though there’s never been any sort of anti-homosexual discrimination here, this past summer our city council came under SJW attack and fell all over themselves in their eagerness to virtue-signal their willingness to “fix” what wasn’t broken and pass some totally non-binding and essentially unenforceable non-discrimination ordinance, which went into effect this January. Our local newspaper interviewed a number of folks around town several weeks ago and the Ann Arbor SJW types proudly gave their names while praising this landmark legislation which will “protect people from hate” while rural conservative types who asked to remain anonymous (i.e. they didn’t want to lose their jobs for daring to state any opinion, however mild, contrary to the SJW bullies’ narrative) saying since there has never been any problem here, it hardly seemed necessary to make such an ordinance which is likely to cause more confusion and problems than it solves.

You can get a humorous sense of this dynamic from last night’s CBS Late Show interview of local Chelsea celebrity Jeff Daniels by Stephen Colbert.

Together they presented the Chelsea Community Calendar (the events on which are actually real), which contains such activities as the Maple Syrup Festival, Family Bowling Night at Chelsea Lanes, and, as Colbert joked:

Tuesday at the Michigan Friends Center is a lecture called, “Why civil resistance works.” Those interested should attend. Those not interested should do everything they can to stop it.

A rather timely joke in light of the SJW attacks on the Chicago Trump rally and a perfect illustration of the tension that can arise between rural conservatives and formerly-urban liberals trying to live in the same town. Truly, Social Justice Warriors are like a plague of locusts, moving from one lovely place to another, destroying it, and then moving on because they don’t actually like living with the results of liberalism.

Ah…but we still have to live our lives, don’t we. Staring too long into the abyss leads to despair, so we turn our minds to happier thoughts.

Like, for instance, poultry! Today was lovely weather and we spent much of the day working on coops and fencing and predator-proofing everything. On April 14th, a dozen pullets will be arriving for us from Townline Hatchery! I ended up ordering them because NO ONE is able to keep chicks in stock; everything that comes in is sold within a day. Even Townline has had to push back delivery dates by a week because demand is so high. I find that rather interesting. Anyway, here is what I ordered:

1 Light Brahma

3 Ameraucans (which are called Easter Eggers due to their pink, blue, and green eggs)

1 Black Jersey Giant

1 Golden Laced Wyandotte

1 Silverlaced Wyandotte

1 Barred Rock

1 Black Australorp

1 Buff Orpington

1 Rhode Island Red

1 Isa Brown

Additionally, we ordered four turkeys:

2 Broad Breasted Whites

2 Orlopp Broad Breasted Bronzes

I thought this would give us a nice little mixed flock. I’ll also probably pick up a half-dozen straight run Isa Browns so we’ll have a rooster or two to help guard the hens.

Additionally, arriving the first week of May is an order of geese and ducks from Metzer’s. I ordered 2 hens and 1 drake of each kind of duck:

3 Rouens

3 White Tufteds

3 Buffs

3 Fawn Indian Runners

For the Pilgrim geese, you were only allowed to order male-female pairs. We had wanted one male and two or three females, but since this wasn’t possible, we just got one pair.

And finally, I’m adding two rather unusual plants to my garden this year: pennyroyal and tobacco. Pennyroyal is an old-time preventive for lice and mites on chickens, as is tobacco (nicotine is actually a poison). If the birds eat a bit, it apparently will not hurt them and may even help them expel worms. According to The Michigan Poultry Breeder, January 1906 edition:

When chicks droop and appear sick without cause, especially in summer, look for lice; not the little red mites, but the large, gray body lice on the head and neck.

If you find them, use a few drops of grease of any kind. A teaspoonful of oil of pennyroyal to a cup of lard is excellent […]

Keep the dustbath always ready. Use dry dirt or sifted coal ashes. Add carbolate of lime, Persian insect powder, or oil of pennyroyal to the dirt.

The mayor of Chelsea voted against the ordinance, stating that it was unnecessary as there are state and federal laws that cover discrimination that our town already must abide by and furthermore, there has never been any kind of hate crime or discrimination incident against homosexuals here.

When he made those statements at the initial discussion about the ordinance back in the summer, the SJW brigade went insane. Seriously,like mentally unstable behavior. The comments under the news stories on MLive were jaw dropping. People ranted and raved about him, saying Wow, just wow. How can this kind of hate still exist in 2015? It didn’t matter that he tried to point out that he didn’t hate gay people or anyone else, that the ordinance just simply served no purpose and only made things muddier, not clearer.

The rest of city council was scared shitless. It was a terrified virtue-signalling fest after that. No one wanted the SJW mob on them. I don’t blame gay people en masse for this. It was truly just the SJW brigade – both homosexual and heterosexual – as it always is, who descended with an iron fist and demanded that everyone submit immediately to their demands, however ludicrous and out of touch with reality.

Whether you are conservative or liberal, you need to understand that SJWs are not your friend. There is no “live and let live” with them. There is no “free speech” with them. I think the Trump rally proves that rather well.

Here is where I should add several disclaimers: I am very conservative, but of course I do not want to see homosexual people harassed or messed with when they are just trying to live their lives. Nevertheless, the ordinance is a useless piece of SJW tyranny. I would far rather live next door to a gay couple than an SJW couple, any day.

Furthermore, I am not voting for Donald Trump. I am not voting for anyone. I do not vote, as a matter of principle. So.

Hope that what happened in Chicago is not allowed to be repeated. These people are messing with elections and free assembly.
I have never heard of a speech venue for a candidate for President shut down by a mob.

But I live in Dunedin. We virtue signalling by getting Syrian refugees (women and children who cannot read Arabic, have been traumatized at best, and who have no support in this area), and not funding the Mental Health Services or the schools or the public health system or paying for interpreters….

…. did the poultry thing when I was a kid. Have fun. My GF spent the weekend faking photos of my Mum with the late summer/ early autumn light before daylight saving ends and the evenings close in.

New arrivals can turn a town upside down. Back where I lived in California, there was a theater planted right in the middle of a residential area. It had been there forever. Years ago, all summer long, they played a tribute to Buddy Holly and it got loud. One neighbor had the police come down every night with their newly acquired decibelmeter and they were legal every time. That winter, they had a one night showing. The neighbor called and the police wouldn’t come.
You’re right. They see some appreciation and move on after they have done their damage.

Speaking of Rhode Island Red, Foghorn Leghorn might want to move in.
Rhode Island Red was a hen he was sweet on.
But, then again he may not move up there. Yankees are rumored to live there.

Some of the ducks are mated-off now, mid March, and the males will lower bills and shoo others from food etc. protecting their mates. I get to chuckling. Two particular ones hang around near my lodging, hoping for Cracker Distribution Incidents. I call them Mr. and Mrs. Unafraid of me.

The geese are fun too — one bedraggled outcast was born with only one wing. Spends most of its time away from the group, not be choice. So that gives me an opportunity to feed it more w/o the others rushing up skeewaaking and demanding Theirs. Yo over here! what I gotta do, poop on your foot?

They tend to snatch their crackers although, cheers, leaving my fingers largely intact. The injured goose, having been humbled and pecked upon all her life, instead approaches me cautiously, and takes the crackers from my hand carefully, gently. We only recently met, but understand each other pretty well.